N Western New Mexico, south of the Santa Fe railway, stands the most interesting cliff in the world. On it are inscribed in letters cut with dagger-points the names of Commander don Juan de Oñante and others, the first Spanish explorers of this land, names over three hundred years old.
Amongst these august signatures, till obliterated by the avenging hand of Lummis, were to be found the common names of common men, tourists of recent years, and we were talking of these vandals and their desecrations when Mr. Shireman of—Oklahoma I think it was he came from—spoke up.
"If those chaps had known they wouldn't have stuck their names there. It's no use abusing them, the amount of condensed and bottled ignorance in this world is past belief and a man may be a saint and a sage and still be one of the bottles.
"Moreover, he may be a sight happier."
It was in the smoke-room of a Seattle boat and through the port you could see the near pine-covered hills and the beaches of Vancouver Island.
The of the screw and the lift of the keel followed Shireman's remarks with others from the beams a-creak and the lamps swinging in their gimbals.
The gentleman from Oklahoma continued after a moment's pause: "It's strange you mentioning those writings just here and now, and my saying that on the spur of the moment, so to speak, not thinking of Billy Nutt who's just jumped into my head though it's twenty years since I saw him last. Twenty-one years to be correct. Twenty-one years and three months and four days to be precise, for I've one of those memories that never forget a date.
"I met him at San José, which is the southernmost of the Perlas Islands in Panama Gulf, just above 8 degrees north. San José doesn't belong properly to that latitude. It belongs to Hades and was towed out of there, climate and devils and all complete, with the devils turned to mosquitoes and lizards and scorpions, and anchored in the Gulf of Panama.
"Billy was on the beach scratching himself and prospecting for the gold of a wreck which was supposed to have been hove up there forty years before, but wasn't. If it was, the land crabs had eaten its bones and the scorpions cashed in the gold bars, and when I came there Billy had come to the same conclusion and was preparing to hike off in search of something else.
"That chap wasn't a man so much as a syndicate; he'd been in fifteen treasure expeditions and there wasn't a gold rush from the Chilcoot to Ballarat, as you might say, that he hadn't been leading the running, according to his own prospectus, which also stated that he'd made three fortunes.
"Barring being able to read and write he was the ignorantest creature ever born, but for all that he held you like a story-book.
"I must tell you that a year before this I'd cleared up more than half a million dollars out of phosphates. It was the El Madrono business; I dare say you've heard tell of, and a lawsuit bit a big chunk out of the profit, or I'd have been a clean million to the good. However, I took five hundred thousand dollars and put them in the bank, which is the best place for dollars, and started in to amuse myself.
"I was twenty years younger then; all the same, a fortnight of San Francisco amusements was as much as I could stand, the pumps sucked, and out I put in an old schooner I hired from McGinnis to hunt the coast for more dollars.
"I'd had enough of Music Halls and such; I was clean crazy for the great open spaces stunt and I was keen to see the prospects of the shark-fishing business in Lower California as a field for the investor. I found Magdalena Bay over-fished and the American fleet at gun practice there. It was a fine sight, but I hadn't come out to see sights, so I put on down the coast making for Panama and Balboa.
"Money smells as well as talks. I tell you I hadn't been in those parts three days before every sort of shark was following after me. Pearl islands, treasure hid in the Galapagos, sunk wrecks only five fathoms deep, gambling hells in St. Louis Potosi, opium-smuggling, the chance of leading a rebellion in Chile and making myself president so that I could scoop the treasury—easy money was lying all round me only waiting for me to put out my hand, but I wasn't having any.
"I put out and reached San José Island, and it was there, as I was telling you, I met Billy.
"I brought him on board the ship for fun, same as you might bring a monkey. His talk on the beach had amused me, and down in the cabin when we had settled to our drinks I began to talk myself, telling him I'd come along down looking out for business and how the whole cheese was full of rats and nothing left but the rind.